Rachel Hewett is an Associate Professor in School of Education. She is currently Head of Department of Disability Inclusion and Special Needs and co-director of Vision Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR).
She joined VICTAR as a Research Associate in 2010, before progressing to a Research Fellow in October 2012 and was appointed as a Birmingham Fellow in September 2017. Previously she worked in Clinical Trials, and managed a series of large phase-three trials at Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit at University of Birmingham.
Rachel’s primary research interests are in the post-16 transition experience of young people with special educational needs and disabilities. She was co-investigator and later principal investigator of the ‘Longitudinal Transitions Study’ which followed the post-16 transition experience of a group of young people with vision impairment over an eleven-year period. She is currently principal investigator of the Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment project. Through her doctoral study she has focused particularly on the experiences of young people with vision impairment in making the transition into Higher Education.
Rachel has been PI and Co-I on research projects funded by various funding bodies, including Nuffield Foundation, Department for Levelling Up, RNIB, Thomas Pocklington Trust, NatSIP and Vision Foundation.